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Inspiring change one Liberating Structure at a time

I have been using #LiberatingStructures at work since the beginning of 2019 and I have found challenging to introduce them, once there is a stablished dynamic in place. This article explains different ways I have used to help me overcome these fears and more.

Context and a personal challenge

I have been generally using #LiberatingStructures, to help us with improving participation and increasing joy in meetings like sprint retrospectives, brainstorming sessions, prioritization and inter team meetings.

Even if I have noticed people resisting to use simple #LiberatingStructures like TRIZ just because it doesn’t make sens to them at the beginning, the biggest fear comes from me not having enough courage to change existing meeting dynamics, to do it differently, using for example a string of #LiberatingStructures. But Why is that? Let’s talk about it.

My intention

I would love to help people understand, there is a lot of potential and possibilities waiting out there, when we tap into the wisdom of a whole group.

I have been seen for the past 9 years of my enabling Agility career, that “Everyone” has something important to say: a word, a though, or just a phrase that could change our views and give us perspective and with it hope to believe that things could be different.

What am I fearing?

While I am writing this article, I am now able to name my fear. I fear you know that look from people when something doesn’t make sense to them? I fear rejection that’s it.

But wait a minute, that doesn’t make much sense given that I am a change agent. I spend hours at a daily bases helping others to face that fear and find ways to overcome it, so how come my fear of being rejected, block my way to what I want to do? Last Friday I said not anymore, and decided to something about it.

I want to keep using and experimenting with each micro-structure offered by the #LiberatingStructures, and what a better place to do it than my own job.

So, I put on my courage helmet and went around the floor where I work everyday, and met 6 people face to face and proposed them to spend 1 hour together every two weeks, to learn by practicing and debriefing together about the power of this beautiful new language called (#LiberatingStructures) and guest what? they came, not one, nor two, all of them!

What’s the strategy?

Every two weeks, we will create a safe space where people from different areas will connect to each other to reveal ideas, suggestions, questions and generate potential actions to help the organization increase its Antifragility.

We will experiment with one or two #LiberatingStructures from the LS Menu and then debrief about its potential applications at the workplace.

We will keep meetings optional and invite participants to contribute to the design of the #LiberatingStructures that will be practiced.

The group got curious about the power of these two micro-structures and how easy it was to get into the subject. Someone mentioned that the way participation was distributed, enabled the group to build up and contribute, it also brought to light different perspectives and angles from similar issues.

What worked well?

Everyone was really engaged into the conversation and everyone participated.

Participants decided to keep doing it, so I will organize a second round of practices.

Having a deck with the invitations ready and each #LiberatingStructures instructions and steps helped to ease its understanding.